For sharpening the debate until the choices bled, for reframing reality to match his design, for gambling his fortunes—and ours—on his faith in the power of leadership, George W. Bush is TIME’s 2004 Person of the Year

You need a Time subscription to read the full story, but you can catch the excerpts here.

The Washington Supreme Court has issued an order rejecting the petition of the Washington State Democratic Party to order a reexamination of previously disqualified absentee and provisional ballots in the recount for Washington’s gubernatorial election.

The Associated Press reports the court said that under Washington law, “ballots are to be ‘retabulated’ only if they have been previously counted or tallied” thereby excluding those ballots that had been disqualified by canvassing boards.

North Carolina - It's Over in NC10:03 PM EDT | Posted By William Teach
>> Go here to visit William Teach's weblog.

In a totally expected move, the North Carolinian Electors through their 15 Votes to President Bush.

William Trotter (R-9th district elector) stated, “It’s a great historic occasion, one that’s very important to me, to get to vote for our President George W. Bush.”

While Trotter cast a vote for the Charlotte area, Judy Keener
(R-13th district elector) cast the first-ever vote for North Carolina’s new 13th Congressional district.

“We should be very thankful for our process and the freedom that
we have to do all this," Keener said.

In somewhat related news, the voting machine problem in Carteret County, which should end up causing a complete re-vote for the position of Secratary of Agriculture, has been discussed in terms of a complete overhaul of the way voting is performed in NC. The Commission is looking for a more uniform system.

Bernard Kerik, the man tapped by President Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security, has withdrawn his name from consideration, saying he wants to avoid a political battle over the immigration status of his former housekeeper.

“I am convinced that, for personal reasons, moving forward would not be in the best interests of your administration, the Department of Homeland Security or the American people,” the former New York police commissioner wrote in a letter to Bush.

Kerik’s letter to the president did not mention the immigration issue. In a statement, however, he said the questions arose as he was completing documents required for Senate confirmation.

The Associated Press reports that a survey conducted by the Quinnipiac Polling Institute found that former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was the favorite among Republicans and U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton were Floridians top choices for the 2008 presidential race.

The New York Times reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton faces a problem that has dogged her since her days as first lady: an entrenched bloc of voters simply do not like her:

One poll after another shows that roughly one of three New Yorkers has an unfavorable opinion of Mrs. Clinton, a statistic that has not changed since she took office in 2001.

Nationally, her standing is worse, even as her aides prepare for what is emerging as a possible bid for president in 2008. Roughly 4 of 10 Americans disapprove of her, according to a recent poll by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

The voters who disapprove of Mrs. Clinton are numerous and unshakable, and they have been around so long that they even have a name in political circles. Hillary haters.

Vote Differences between the two candidates Post-Recount
Bush over Kerry by 118,775
November 2 Differences
Bush over Kerry by 136,483

So reviewing all that data, Bush’s lead has slightly declined but Kerry would still have not won unless he had won almost 100% of the provisional votes. Now, my democrat friends, please stop calling for recounts, it only come back to bite you in the ass (Gore 2000 and now Kerry 2004).

resident Bush will nominate former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik as the next secretary for homeland security, FOX News confirmed Thursday.

Bush is expected to name Kerik in an announcement Friday.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kerik, who was chosen to train the Iraqi police force after Saddam Hussein’s departure, will be responsible for running a collection of 22 disparate federal agencies with more than 180,000 employees.

The Washington Post reports that on Tuesday the Kerry presidential campaign asked an Ohio judge to allow it to join the legal fight over whether one county can decline to participate in the state’s impending recount:

A pair of third-party presidential candidates, who said that reports of problems at the polls on Election Day are not being addressed, are forcing the Buckeye State to recount its entire presidential vote. But David A. Yost, a lawyer for Delaware County, just outside Columbus, won a temporary restraining order last week blocking any recount there. He told the Columbus Dispatch that a second count would be a poor use of county resources. President Bush won the mostly Republican area handily, unofficial results show.

Lawyers for the Kerry campaign asked to join Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik and the National Voting Rights Institute in the fight to force the county to participate in the recount. “If there’s going to be a recount in Ohio, we don’t want it to exclude Delaware County or any other county that might decide to follow Delaware County’s lead,” Kerry lawyer Dan Hoffheimer said. “It should be a full, fair and accurate recount.”

The NC State Board of Elections has made a decision regarding the Nov. 2nd election problems in Carteret County, where a voting machine did not record thousands of votes. Memory set incorectly. They have "voted 4-1 to allow allow participation in the special election by early voters whose ballots were lost, along with those who did not vote Nov. 2."

By a 3-2 margin, board members initially
voted down motions to allow a revote by the Carteret voters whose
ballots were lost and to hold a new agriculture commissioner election
in that county.

Board members then voted 3-2 in favor of calling
a new statewide election for agriculture commissioner. But because four
votes were required for passage of that measure, it also failed.

That left the board at an apparent impasse and members called a recess. They
later returned and cast the final vote in favor of the special election
in Carteret County.

This is good news. No full North Carolina re-vote. Will only happen in Carteret County, and, in my opinion, that is the way it should be. Furthermore:

The board also rejected a protest over
ballots cast outside voters’ precincts and unanimously certified
Democrat June Atkinson as the winner of the race for state
superintendent of public instruction. Atkinson led her race by 8,535
votes over Republican Bill Fletcher.

However, it is going to be a long, drawn out court battle on that one.

The Associated Press reports that Dino Rossi was certified as the winner of Washington’s race for governor, but the contest isn’t over:

“A recount is almost a certainty,” said Secretary of State Sam Reed, the state’s chief elections officer.

Reed declared Rossi defeated Democrat Christine Gregoire by just 42 votes out of 2.8 million cast. But on Friday, the Democrats are expected to request a hand recount of some or all of the ballots. That could extend the uncertainty until Christmas.

In an e-mail circulated to senior Homeland Security officials, Ridge praised the department as “an extraordinary organization that each day contributes to keeping America safe and free.” He also said he was privileged to work with the department’s 180,000 employees “who go to work every day dedicated to making our company better and more secure.”

Government officials, speaking on grounds of anonymity because a formal announcement was pending, confirmed his resignation.

Among those mentioned as possible candidates for Ridge’s replacement are Bernard Kerik, interim Minister of the Interior for Iraq and former New York City police commissioner, former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt and White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend. Others are also believed to be interested in the job, including Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security in the Homeland Security Department.

The New York Times reports that President Bush nominated Carlos M. Gutierrez to be Secretary of Commerce:

President Bush on Monday nominated Carlos M. Gutierrez, among the most prominent Hispanic business executives in the United States, to be his commerce secretary, as the president continued with what Republicans said would be a broad overhaul of his cabinet.

Mr. Gutierrez, 51, has been chief executive of the Kellogg Company, the cereal maker, for more than five years, and has built a reputation as an innovative and forceful business leader with broad international experience. But he has little background in public policy, leaving him largely unknown in political circles and untested by the demands of a high-profile job in Washington.

“He understands the world of business, from the first rung on the ladder to the very top,” Mr. Bush said, with Mr. Gutierrez at his side in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. “He knows exactly what it takes to help American businesses grow and to create jobs.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Nearly a month after John Kerry (search) conceded Ohio to President Bush, complaints and challenges about the balloting are mounting as activists including the Rev. Jesse Jackson demand closer scrutiny to ensure the votes are being counted on the up-and-up.

Jackson held rallies in Ohio over the weekend to draw attention to the vote, and another critic plans to ask the state Supreme Court this week to decide the validity of the election…

Olbermann’s previous report (11/21) includes the following concerning the Berkeley study:

…Meantime, The Oakland Tribune not only devoted seventeen paragraphs Friday to the UC Berkeley study on the voting curiosities in Florida, but actually expended considerable energy towards what we used to call ‘advancing the story’: “The UC Berkeley report has not been peer reviewed, but a reputable MIT political scientist succeeded in replicating the analysis Thursday at the request of the Oakland Tribune and The Associated Press. He said an investigation is warranted.”

In fact, he - MIT Arts and Social Sciences Dean Charles Stewart - said more than that. “There is an interesting pattern here that I hope someone looks into.” Stewart is part of the same Cal Tech/MIT Voting Project that had earlier issued a preliminary report suggesting that there was no evidence of significant voting irregularity in Florida. Dean Stewart added he didn’t necessarily buy the Berkeley conclusion - that the only variable that could explain the “excessive” votes in Florida was poisoned touch-screen voting - and still thought there were other options, such as, in the words of The Tribune’s Ian Hoffman “absentee voting or some quirk of election administration.”…

And, from NE’s WOWT:“Sarpy County election officials are trying to figure out how they ended up with more votes than voters in the general election. As many as 10,000 extra votes have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals… Johnny Boykin lost his bid to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat in the race was 127 votes.” An interesting computer error may be involved.

The Boston Globe reports that John Kerry plans to set up a federal campaign committee, Friends of John Kerry, which would allow him to seek a fifth term in the US Senate in 2008 while not precluding another run for president that year.

The Committee will be a vehicle for fund-raising for either campaign.

According to the Globe, Kerry transferred all the money from his previous committee to his presidential campaign committee after retaining his Senate seat in 2002 and Kerry could do the same should he decide against seeking reelection in favor of a second bid for the presidency.

The State Board of Elections certified nearly all results from the Nov. 2 election on Tuesday, but withheld approval of the outcome of two statewide races that are the subject of protests.

In a five-minute teleconfernce, the board members signed off on the final results for scores of races, including President Bush’s victory over John Kerry and wins by Gov. Mike Easley and Richard Burr for U.S. Senate.

The board declined to make final the results in the races for agriculture commissioner and superintendent of public instruction. Also still pending are certified outcomes of two District Court races and one legislative race.

Here is the kicker:

Protest hearings on those and other contests have been set for Nov. 30. The elections board could call for a new election, either just in Carteret County or statewide, to resolve the disputed Council of State races. The board also could seek a re-vote by people in Carteret County whose ballots were lost.

A new election would not be held until late February at the earliest.

Considering that a new statewide revote would cost over $3 million, let’s go for a re-vote in only the disputed areas, particularly Carteret County. And, it looks like a re-vote will only include the positions that are disputed. It will not be a general election.

Cross posted (exactly the same, not spinning this, rather cut and dry) at me Dreadnaught.

A private jet that was en route to Houston to pick up former President Bush clipped a light pole and crashed Monday as it approached Hobby Airport in thick fog, killing all three people aboard.

The Gulfstream G-1159A jet, coming into Houston, went down about 6:15 a.m. in an undeveloped area 1½ miles south of the airport, officials said. The former president had been scheduled to travel to Ecuador for a conference.

“I was deeply saddened to learn of the plane crash this morning,” Bush said through spokesman Tom Frechette. “I’d flown with this group before and know them well. I join in sending heartfelt condolences to each and every member of their families.”

SALISBURY, N.C. — A community college instructor who was suspended for showing “Fahrenheit 9/11” in class the week before the presidential election is offering no apologies and says he was unfairly punished.

Davis March showed the Michael Moore documentary critical of President Bush to his film class. Administrators pulled the plug on the movie with about 20 minutes left when March tried to show it to English composition students.

“This story is now about academic freedom . . . the movie is ancient history,” said March, who served a four-day suspension and returned Nov. 2 to Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, about 45 miles northeast of Charlotte.

School officials said March disobeyed orders by refusing to meet with administrators before showing the film, but March said no instruction to seek permission had been issued.

Was this even legal to show it? There is a disclaimer on the video that restricts “unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or exhibition of copyrighted motion pictures, videotapes, or videodisks.”

Today the University of California’s Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team released a statistical study - the sole method available to monitor the accuracy of e-voting - reporting irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods - what the team says can be deemed a “smoke alarm.” Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance - the probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team formally disclosed results of the study at a press conference today at the UC Berkeley Survey Research Center, where they called on Florida voting officials to investigate.

The three counties where the voting anomalies were most prevalent were also the most heavily Democratic: Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, respectively. Statistical patterns in counties that did not have e-touch voting machines predict a 28,000 vote decrease in President Bush’s support in Broward County; machines tallied an increase of 51,000 votes - a net gain of 81,000 for the incumbent. President Bush should have lost 8,900 votes in Palm Beach County, but instead gained 41,000 - a difference of 49,900. He should have gained only 18,400 votes in Miami-Dade County but saw a gain of 37,000 - a difference of 19,300 votes…

ComputerWorld has a report similar to the press release here. The study gets dismissed here.

The study itself is available here. Perhaps someone who’s familiar with statistics can weigh in.

UPDATE 2: Wired has a report including a few quotes here. The blog Who Really Won? is covering these topics. The 11/20 entry here (no permalink) raises potential problems with the study. This says the CalInsider letter is from Dafydd ab Hugh, an author. There’s a MetaFilter thread on the study here.

The study is discussed from a statistics perspective here; perhaps someone who’s familiar with the field could give a summary. That last link includes several other links, charts, etc.

Conservative Republican senators on Thursday unanimously supported moderate Republican Sen. Arlen Specter as the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, ending a grueling campaign Specter waged both publicly and privately to guarantee his seat.

The effort followed a weeks-long controversy that erupted when Specter made comments concerning judicial nominees that seemed to suggest President Bush would have a hard time getting his choices confirmed.

“Arlen Specter will be our next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. We are pleased to support Arlen in this matter,” said outgoing chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

A statewide recount of the presidential vote appears inevitable after a pair of third-party candidates said they have collected enough money to pay for it.

The recount would be conducted after the election results are certified in early December.

Libertarian Michael Badnarik and the Green Party’s David Cobb said on Monday they raised more than $150,000 in four days, mostly in small contributions.

Ohio law requires payment of $10 per precinct for a recount, or $113,600 statewide.

Badnarik and Cobb said they aren’t trying to overturn President Bush’s 136,000-vote victory in Ohio, but just want to ensure that all votes were counted properly in the face of concerns about Election Day irregularities.

Turns out that the recount will cost the counties (and thus taxpayers) about $1.5 Million. Awesome!

Sarcasm aside, given 5.5 million votes in Ohio, it’ll cost each voter 27 cents (less when you consider that voters < taxpayers), I figure this is a reasonable amount to pay - as long as the process highlights the need for a more reliable, honest, and accountable voting system.

Here’s the story: A research team at UC Berkeley will report that irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods. This is the first time that an academic institution has formally challenged the e-voting system, and the University is calling on local voting officials in Florida to investigate. The research team – which comprises some of the top minds in voter research – will disclose full results of the study and the raw data at the press conference tomorrow.

I’m not going to be able to make the press release, but we’ll try to have it covered …

North Carolina - Do Over!07:24 AM EDT | Posted By William Teach
>> Go here to visit William Teach's weblog.

It looks like there is a possibility that a faulty voting machine in Carteret County, NC (if you are looking at a map, it is a county just to the north of where Jacksonville, NC is) could cause a new state wide election:

Elections workers and reporters crammed themselves into a tiny storage room Tuesday and angled for their best views of a black metal box the size of a large briefcase.

And then they studied a three-word electronic message — “Voter log full” — that some in the room, deep down, had hoped wouldn’t appear.

The warning message indicated that a computer tallying votes in coastal Carteret County had reached its limit at 3,016 electronic ballots.

If only someone had seen the same message a few weeks ago, when the votes actually mattered.

Tuesday’s exercise was the latest in an investigation into an embarrassing, and possibly costly, voting problem. Because of problems with the county’s voting machine, North Carolina may have to hold another statewide election to pick an agriculture commissioner.

Should make those who are calling for recounts, and yelling “fraud!” on the leftist websites, such as the DU, mucho happy. But, and there is always a “but,” it seems like that most of the votes lost were Republican votes. Many have gotten a kick out of the company who made the faulty machine, UniLect Corp. Plus, it could cost $3+ million, and may include a full revote for all positions, including President, Senators, Gov, etc.

The closest governor’s race is now at end. The Secretary of State has certified Dino Rossi as the winner of the 2004 Governorship Election for the State of Washington. He won over Attorney General Gregoire (who works in Vancouver where I live) by 261 votes. Of course, under Washington State law if the vote is less than a 2,000 vote margin, there must be a mandatory recount. Now I’m expecting the Democrats in my state to get into a fit over this.

Meanwhile, I’m glad that Dino Rossi won. Because I know Gregoire’s reputation and it’s not that great to me. My friend used to work for her office and he was fired for wrong reasons. Thus giving me one of the reasons to vote against Gregoire for the Governorship. Plus the Democrats have too long controlled the governorship of Washington and I feel that there needs to be a change to a Republican Governorship which there hasn’t been one since 25 years ago.

Now, I would assume Lonewacko will go find some DU stuff about “Irregularities” in the Washington State Governorship. As I’m assuming he has the notion that all elections are perfect but 2004/0 and there has been no history of voter fraud. Psst, my mother works for the election in Washington State. And as evident by his blog, I’m assuming he’s going to keep doing the “Irregularities” post going until Bush is sworn in.

Funny thing about Washington’s Election was that Clark County had a history of voting for Democrats overwhelmingly over Republicans but this election proved that otherwise. Since that most Republicans are in the country area surrounding Vancouver/East Side vs the Democrats in the cities/North/West/South Side

What: A research team at UC Berkeley will report that irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods. Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance — the probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team, led by Professor Michael Hout, will formally disclose results of the study at the press conference.

See the link for the call in number.

Ohio provisional ballots seem legitimate: Of the 11 counties that have completed checking provisional ballots, 81 percent of the ballots are valid, according to an Associated Press survey Monday. Counties that have completed partial tallies also said most of the provisional ballots were being counted…

Election officials in one Ohio county found that about 2,600 ballots were double-counted, and two other counties have discovered possible cases of people voting twice in the presidential election.

…[Sandusky County elections director Barb] Tuckerman believes the votes were counted twice when they were mistakenly placed alongside a pile of uncounted ballots. The room where the ballots were being fed into optical-scan machines on election night was so crowded that ballots had to be placed on the floor, Tuckerman said.

“It was totally hectic,” she said.

The problem was discovered when Tuckerman found that one precinct showed 131 percent of registered voters had cast ballots.

Opponents of slot machines at South Florida pari-mutuel venues have filed a lawsuit seeking an official recount of about 78,000 absentee ballots cast in Broward County on Amendment 4 in the Nov. 2 election.

The votes in question were counted late on election night after a glitch was discovered in the computers tallying absentees. About 94 percent of the new votes on Amendment 4 turned out to be “yes” and 6 percent “no” — an outcome No Casinos officials claim is a “statistical anomaly” that calls the count into question…

From 11/1’s “Computer Chip Blamed For Voting Problem In Volusia County”: A computer chip is getting the blame for some voter problems in Volusia County. Those ballots will have to be re-fed. The defective chip was found Monday morning as poll workers fired up the machine for the last day of early voting… The chip was escorted by deputies to Daytona Beach and is in use right now.

Conspiracy Theories Abound After Election quotes a spokesman for a trade organization: “The fact is, electronic voting machines worked great … this is an enormous success story.” It also quotes John Fund of the WSJ: “There are 200,000 precincts in this country … there are going to be problems. You know, there was a computer in North Carolina that actually ate 4,500 votes… There are genuine problems but we shouldn’t be distracted, if we can, by Internet fantasists.”

Voters in Utah County had more than a one in five chance that their ballots did not get counted in the initial, unofficial tally from Election Day.

A programming glitch in the punch-card counter dropped 33,000 ballots from the totals - all of them straight-party ballots. That was more than 22 percent of the 145,769 ballots cast in the Republican stronghold.

“The card readers were fine; it was just the way it was programmed initially,” Utah County elections coordinator Kristen Swensen said Friday. “It was just off by one letter.”

The ballots were recounted Wednesday and the 33,000 missing votes were distributed to the candidates for whom they were cast. Despite the large amount of votes involved, the goof - and subsequent fix - did not change the outcome in any race, Swensen said.

The University of Michigan Board of Regents results are wrong. The State of Michigan received wrong results from Washtenaw County. Washtenaw County inaccurately tallied the results of Ann Arbor’s Ward 5 Precinct 9.

This is because our County Clerk failed to modify electronically reported results based on improper writein votes. A larger problem is that Ann Arbor does not train election inspectors to look for such modifications.

I spoke about the votes in question here. (FYI, I spoke about the election experience here and here.) Here’s what happened:

Today at Colby College, Mayflower Hill conducted an exclusive interview with Warren Mitofsky— one of the architects of the National Election Pool Exit Polls— about the questions surrounding this year’s numbers, leaks to bloggers, computer voting machines that don’t leave paper trails, and more.

What is important is that Mitofsky puts the conspiracy theories to rest by declaring- categorically- that after extensive analysis, he believes his numbers were off and sees NO EVIDENCE of systematic voter fraud.

The Associated Press reports that Simon Rosenberg, founder and president of the centrist New Democrat Network says, “John Kerry did not compete adequately for Hispanic votes, period. If we don’t reverse the gains that President Bush made, we can forget our hope of being a majority party again.”

Rosenberg also complained that “the Kerry campaign and the DNC lacked a national strategy for Hispanics and did not spend enough money on advertising or enough time campaigning in Hispanic communities and did not employ enough people on the get-out-the-vote effort.”

President Bush has tapped another Texan to be his education secretary.

Bush on Tuesday chose Margaret Spellings, his domestic policy adviser, to succeed Rod Paige as head of the Education Department, administration officials said.

Spellings, a graduate of Houston’s Sharpstown High School and the University of Houston, was a major force behind the No Child Left Behind Act, the president’s first big domestic legislative victory.

Spellings, 46, has worked for the president since 1994, when he was running for governor of Texas. She served as his senior adviser for six years and was responsible for developing and implementing his education policy. That policy later became much of the groundwork for the No Child Left Behind legislation.

Spellings took her first political job in 1980, when she worked on the failed presidential campaign of former Texas Gov. John Connally.

Election officials began the tedious task of looking at questionable ballots from Tuesday’s election by hand on Thursday.

The ballot instructions showed voters how to complete the arrow on the ballot, but hundreds of people scribbled dots, drew double lines or put the line in the wrong place. The voting machines could not read those ballots.

Interesting question: if the instructions weren’t followed, should they be counted. I know my opinion, but posts are no spin.

The NYT editorial “About Those Election Results” (also here) discusses various problems with eVoting, mentions the blogosphere, and suggest reforms to make the process more trustworthy.

There’s a 10Meg video of Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and the NYT’s John Schwartz on Charlie Rose here. Nadler was one of the congressmen who sent the letter to the GAO requesting an investigation of voting irregularities.

This unconfirmed report on Taos County, NM says:For the early voters on the paper trail/optical scanner machine, 100% of the voters cast a vote for President. For the Election day voters on the no-paper-trail machine, 14+%, about one in 7, showed no vote for president…

Warren County, Ohio is reportedly doing a recount. This was the county that prevented reporters from observing the initial ballot counting due to a supposed terrorism threat.

Secretary of State Colin Powell announced his resignation to his staff during their Monday morning meeting, a State Department source told FOX News.

President Bush is expected to make the official announcement. The source suggested that Powell is likely to stay in place until a replacement is confirmed.

More details as we get them.

Update:

Powell reportedly handed in his resignation Friday. But the president has not yet accepted his resignation.CNN reported that there is a lot of speculation that Condoleezza Rice will be offered Powell’s position.

The White House was preparing an announcement to confirm Powell’s resignation. According to one official, Powell expects that his departure date will be sometime in January. It was not immediately clear whether he will leave before Bush’s second inauguration on Jan 20.

Most of the speculation on a successor has centered on U.N. Ambassador John Danforth, a Republican and former U.S. senator from Missouri.

Update:

Various other news services reported that Agriculture Secretary Anne Veneman, Education Secretary Spencer Abraham and Education Secretary Rod Paige had also told President Bush of their intentions to leave the administration.

Update:

This makes it look pretty definite that all those mentioned will be resigning.

A Florida-style nightmare has unfolded in North Carolina in the 10 days since Election Day, with thousands of votes missing and the outcome of two statewide races still up in the air.

The fiasco has not reached the proportions of what happened in 2000 in Florida — in part because the presidential race was not close here. But election observers say North Carolina has been the site of some of 2004’s worst problems. (empasis mine)

The biggest failure resulted from a computer glitch that wiped out more than 4,400 votes in one county, while other disputes have focused on how to count provisional ballots. In another county, 12,000 early and absentee votes were misplaced due to a procedural error, but later found.

Federal authorities said they plan to look into what happened in two counties that have had the most severe breakdowns.

Might want to check WRAL’s politics section, lots of interesting stuff on the recounts and who is effected. Nothing is being mentioned that would affect the National or Governor counts, though.

After four years as education secretary, bringing President Bush’s signature law on education to classrooms across the nation, Rod Paige plans to leave the cabinet in the near future, administration officials said Friday.
..following the resignations of Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans earlier this week.

Is this a build up to the resignation of the only respectable figure on the cabinet, Colin Powell? It seems he has been awfully busy for a man about to leave, with a rencent trip to Asia and regular interviews ( most recently ) with Arab journalist, Powell’s agenda is now lined up with
plans to meet with the new Palestinian leaders soon.

Powell’s tacit seal of approval will help López Obrador undermine his critics’ assertions that he is an irresponsible leftist populist.

Powell is Bush’s man of the world, in my view it would be fitting that he eventually leave. He is too good of a man who has earned too much respect to be associated with such a crowd, but on the other hand I feel a lot more comfortable with Powell keeping an eye on Bush, its a real quagmire.

Now Lonewacko wants to debunk this article by saying he’s a Newsmax editor. However the man does have good points. With the election over now and President Bush is still clearly the winner of the 2004 Election, Democrats left and right have been coming up with accusation except for one thing they lacked. Which Howard Troxler points out: Evidence.

Lonewacko wants Kerry President as evident in his blog however I still stand with the stance that Kerry conceded and lost the election to a War Incumbent which no President has ever been voted out during a war (Jefferson [Tripoli War], Madison [War of 1812], Lincoln [Civil War], Roosevelt [World War II], Johnson [Vietnam War]). Kerry also lost to a President that won by more than 3.9 million votes and 286 electoral votes. Especially the fact that the last 3 Democrat Presidents (Arkansas, Texas, Georgia) came from the South which Democrats are saying “Forget the South, we can win without them”. One thing has been put to rest. The Redskin Football game which they lost and the incumbent should lose, Bush won.

I’ll mention a couple strong points from the article I linked.

CLAIM: Kerry really won Ohio.

There are still 155,000 or so uncounted provisional and absentee ballots. If by some miracle Kerry got almost all of them, he would win. A miracle.

Furthermore, there also were 93,000 “spoiled” ballots in Ohio that, had they gone to Kerry by a miraculously large margin . . . uh, well, still wouldn’t have been enough. By the way, there were fewer undervotes and overvotes than in 2000.

CLAIM: A machine in Franklin County, Ohio, recorded an extra 3,893 votes for Bush.

This is perfectly true, and one of at least two serious machine mistakes around the country. When the results cartridge of an older-generation machine was plugged in to the counter, it reported almost 4,000 extra votes for Bush, when only 638 people had voted in the precinct.

At the risk of being labeled part of the plot, I want to point out that they caught this obvious mistake. You can’t “stuff’ the ballot box. There is a signed, independent record of how many people voted.

And Kerry conceded in the election and there is no way he can get the Presidency even if Kerry won by some miracle. When Inauguration Day comes, the voting irregularity will simply fade away.

Interesting thing I heard today, in Ohio, provisional ballots matter for Kerry but apparently in Washington, those provision ballots didn’t matter for the Democrat Candidate Gregoire. So those provisional ballots were thrown out by a judge which the Democrat Party contested and took to court which they won. Since that Gregoire is losing by a slim margin of 2,000+ to Dino Rossi and is expected to increase as more provisional ballots gets counted. Oh Washington Government is the source of the votes counted which is accurate. If you’re looking at USA Today, Fox News, or CNN, they’re outdated

From 11/13’s “State election officials approve Nader recount”: State election officials agreed Friday to a last-minute recount of the presidential race requested by Ralph Nader. Nader asked for a recount in 11 wards last week…Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the campaign would consider requesting additional recounts after reviewing the results of the initial 11. (A “ward” appears to correspond to a precinct or similar, not a county.)

However, Fidlar also is verifying programming of its optical-scan equipment in Wisconsin and Michigan, which, like Indiana, have straight-party voting, Vern Paddock of Fidlar technical support told the Palladium-Item of Richmond.

The Franklin County problem does not call into question any results in Wisconsin or Michigan, Bill Barrett, national sales manager for Fidlar, told The Associated Press on Friday.

…Kate Shepherd, a spokeswoman for the Indiana secretary of state’s office, said the state Election Division was aware of the vote-counting problem in Franklin County. She said tests with Fidlar’s optical-scan equipment before the election found no problems.

And, from Fidlar admits election blip: …Fidlar officials went to Franklin County on Wednesday to assist in a recount and told Flaspohler a programming error was the culprit. After adjusting the program, the ballots were run again, and more than 600 votes that previously went to Libertarians were added to Democratic tallies…

This post contains several links about possible voting fraud from the 1980’s. That links to 11/9’s “Carteret ballots are gone forever”: The problem was blamed on misinformation supplied by the manufacturer. Unilect told elections officials that the early voting unit’s storage capacity was 10,500 votes when, in fact, the actual limit was 3,005. On Nov. 6, Carteret Board of Elections Chairman L.E. Pond said all early votes cast after No. 3,005 were lost… Pond also said the problem could have been avoided with a single keystroke of the county’s central computer, which would have increased the storage capacity. Elections officials attributed that mistake, too, to Unilect. UniLect, which acknowledged the problems, said this is the first time any of its customers has lost votes in an election - and, further, that the equipment operated just as it was set up to do…

11/9’s “Voter fraud uncovered in New Mexico” discussed several instances of double voting and other forms of fraud in Bernalillo County. On Friday, that county’s results were certified: …[after the certification] the president retains a statewide lead of 6,120 votes in an Associated Press unofficial tally late Friday that did not include final numbers from a few other counties.

Others have blogged about this happening in other parts of the country, now we have "support groups" and therapy for the "anybody but Bushers," now we have it in the Triangle.

In fact, group therapy may be on the way.

Irene Kennedy, a Raleigh clinical social worker, is trying to assemble a support group for pained voters who cannot seem to move beyond the loss of their candidate, John Kerry.

"If you’re starting fights with people in the supermarket, you have to stop and think, ‘What’s going on?’ " Kennedy said. It’s Election Day plus 10. If your side lost and you are still feeling angry, sad or bewildered, take heart: You have lots of company.

I have removed the spin from the post I wrote on my blog. This is a no spin zone at the Command Center Election 2004. Ok, just a little spin. Even the N&O knew what this election was about:

Radios are tuned to music, not talk. Newspapers with front-page pictures of the victor get flipped over quickly to hide what those in the anybody-but-Bush crowd refer to as “that smug mug.”

The Caltech-MIT/Voting Technology Project has a few reports on the 2004 elections which have been referenced elsewhere including in the last article. Unfortunately, as discussed here, they appear to be advocates for electronic voting or they at least have such articles at their site.

(Editorial content: The Caltech-MIT group appears to be located somewhere on the continuum between impartial observers and a trade group. I only looked through a few things on their site, but I only saw the upside of eVoting. I’d imagine within a 1 mile radius of Caltech there are hundreds of hackers who could spend all day thinking up ways to hack into eVoting, and I didn’t see anything about, for instance, security at the Caltech-MIT site. The report Voter Verifiable Audio Audit Transcript Trail by one of their principals makes the suggestion that a three-head tape recorder should be used as part of the audit trail of voting machines. One can only imagine all the problems inherent in this idea. Jammed tapes, tapes having to be changed, tapes being recorded over, tapes not being changed when they had to be, poll workers forgetting to put the tape in, poll workers running out of tape, the cost of the tape, transporting, cataloging, and archiving the tapes, copying over the tapes on a yearly basis to guard against deterioration, putting the wrong type of tape in, the mechanism not working, the power plug to the mechanism failing, the mechanism spontaneously combusting… you get the picture.)

Are the provisional ballots in Ohio being thrown out? A new rule for counting provisional ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio was implemented on Tuesday, November 9 at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon, according to election observer Victoria Lovegren.

The new ruling in Cuyahoga County mandates that provisional ballots in yellow packets must be “Rejected” if there is no “date of birth” on the packet. The Free Press obtained copies of the original “Provisional Verification Procedure” from Cuyahoga County which stated “Date of birth is not mandatory and should not reject a provisional ballot.” The original procedure required the voter’s name, address and a signature that matched the signature in the county’s database…

That pesky 16-bit bug has unconfirmed instances of “short vs. long” overflows previously described here. These concern Franklin County, Ohio rather than Broward County as did the other suspected incident.

When former Houston schools Superintendent Rod Paige accepted President Bush’s offer to join his Cabinet as education secretary four years ago, he told friends he didn’t want to work past his 70th birthday.

Now 71, Paige has kept quiet about whether he’ll join the list of Cabinet members who won’t be around for Bush’s second term.

Bush has asked Cabinet members to let him know whether they plan to stay by week’s end, and some of them, including Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Don Evans, have resigned.

Paige’s friends in Houston said Wednesday they wouldn’t be surprised to see Paige back in town soon, since he’s accomplished his mission of implementing the controversial No Child Left Behind Act.

“If I were him, I would,” said Don McAdams, who along with Paige served on the Houston school board that ushered in the reforms that led to No Child Left Behind.

Technically, he could take his old job back at HISD…

UPDATE:
Rumors have been that he is leaving, official announcement to follow shortly.

The Utica Observer Dispatch reports that former president Clinton put much of the blame for Kerry’s loss on gay marriage:

“Gay marriage was an overwhelming factor in the defeat of John Kerry,” Clinton told the audience at the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House.

[. . .]

“There was astonishing turnout among evangelical Christians who were voting on the basis of moral values,” he said. “I do not believe either party has a monopoly on morality or truth.”

Clinton said Democrats had a story to tell about abortion and gay marriage. They didn’t tell it. Abortions declined during his terms in office, he said, because of policies encouraging adoption and rewarding mothers.

Democrats should have emphasized that gay marriage should be up to the states — and that state sovereignty is a traditionally Republican value.

“Gay marriage was an overwhelming factor in the defeat of John Kerry,” Clinton said. “With one decision of one Supreme Court, all of the sudden we have a constitutional amendment designed, I think, to whip people up, to inflame them, make them stop thinking about other issues.”

The WaPo’s Latest Conspiracy Theory — Kerry Won — Hits the Ether attempts to pour some cold water on the various conspiracy theories. Tenor sample: Even as Sen. John F. Kerry’s campaign is steadfastly refusing to challenge the results of the presidential election, the bloggers and the mortally wounded party loyalists and the spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists are filling the Internet with head-turning allegations.

Curious voting totals in Cuyahoga County Ohio are said to be innocuous in “Cuyahoga board deflates vote suspicions”. Someone who purports to be a former Board of Elections official in that county says he’s examined the data and agrees that while Cuyahoga’s way of representing data is confusing, the numbers do add up.

From “State Police investigating voter fraud”: New Mexico State Police are investigating allegations of voter fraud – including one instance in which an as-of-yet unnamed woman is being connected with up to 200 bogus ballots…

(Suggestion: what’s really needed here is some way to organize all these reports and rank them by severity and credibility. So, the problems in Cuyahoga county could be ranked by how many votes might have been affected and by whether the explanation offered holds up to scrutiny. This would require the assistance of impartial experts in political science, statistics, and other fields. That way, unconfirmed reports of two people not being able to vote would sink and verified reports of thousands of votes having been lost would rise. Without something like this, anyone who looks into this is going to soon suffer from information overload.)

Well, I’m a resident of the state of Washington yet I live in Idaho for college (Brigham Young University-Idaho). I’ve been paying attention to the governorship of Washington. Currently Dino Rossi is up by 3,500+ votes. The last 5 days before yesterday, Gregoire was winning by 10,000+ votes plenty of times and I thought the race was over. But until yesterday, Dino Rossi was up by 2,000+ votes and now he’s at 3,500+ votes. This is a close election that’s still on-going.

Salon (“Was the election stolen?”) and the Boston Globe (“Internet buzz on vote fraud is dismissed”) offer similar articles. They both discuss the buzz about voting fraud, discuss the current known problems, and come to the conclusion that while problems occurred there’s no evidence of widespread fraud that would tilt the election the other way. This blog, this, and this all take generally the same tack.

UPDATE: The Wikipedia entry on 2004 irregularities is here. Note the disclaimer and the talk page about the entry itself.

“Warren Co. defends lockdown decision” includes this FBI quote: “The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day.” See this for the previous coverage of Warren County Ohio’s decision to bar reporters from viewing the counting of the votes in that county.

Keith Olbermann says he will have more coverage of these issues tonight.

(Editorial note: Some Kerry partisans outright claim there was fraud. Some Bush partisans outright claim there was no fraud. In any case, voting machines shouldn’t count backwards. All of these instances of possible voting fraud or error need to be thoroughly investigated. Those who attempt to sweep this under the rug might end up on the other side of a future election, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to carefully examine all cases of potential fraud or error.)

NASHVILLE — Governor Phil Bredesen today announced the State of Tennessee has set in motion a process to dissolve TennCare, the state’s financially troubled $7.8 billion healthcare plan, pending final discussions with public-interest attorneys. The process will replace TennCare with a traditional Medicaid program similar to what’s currently offered in more than 40 other states.

“TennCare is a noble and worthwhile initiative that has made significant contributions to public health in Tennessee,” Bredesen said. “Over the past year, we’ve made every possible effort to preserve the program. But persistent lawsuits have tied our hands. The sad reality is, we can’t afford TennCare in its current form. It pains me to set this process in motion, but I won’t let TennCare bankrupt our State. This is the option of last resort.”

White House counsel Alberto Gonzales has been chosen by President Bush to be the next attorney general, U.S. officials confirmed to FOX News on Wednesday. An announcement from the White House could come later Wednesday.

Gonzales, who would be the first Hispanic attorney general if confirmed by the Senate, would replace John Ashcroft (search).

“I would not rule out an announcement today,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

(Texan Editor’s Note: Gonzales’ hometown. It’s pronounced “Umble” and not “Humble.” The H is not just silent, but it is out drinking with its buddies.)

This page discusses the exit polls and says: “A statistical analysis of exit polling conducted for RAW STORY by a former MIT mathematics professor has found the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 percent among all 16 states included in the media’s 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent.”

…I did, however, observe a vulnerability that I do not think would exist with non-DRE voting. It turned out that the new judge, Terry, was the security manager for the church where our election was held. He carried a large keyring to all the doors in the building. He was also in the same political party as chief judge Marie and her husband. One of the reasons why we have election judges from both major parties at each station at the polling center is to provide checks and balances. The night before the election, there was an imbalance. Two judges from the same party had set up the machines alone, and that night, someone from the same party had access to the room where the machines were left unguarded. Why is that a problem? The Diebold Accuvote TS machines were shown to be highly vulnerable to tampering. With physical access to the machines, for example, one could change a few bytes in the ballot definition file and votes for the two major Presidential candidates would be swapped. In that case, none of the procedures we had in place could detect that votes were tallied for the wrong candidates…

At 8:00 p.m., we closed the polls and locked the outside doors. This time we did not have to call security because Terry had the keys. Every hour we had counted the number of people who had voted and posted the turnout on the door of the polling place. When we closed the doors, there had been 725 digital ballots cast, and the chief judges decided not to modem in the results because it would be too much of a hassle. Instead, when they left the precinct later that night, they drove the memory cards with the totals to the board of elections office. I stared at the five machines. Inside them were the little memory cards, not unlike the one in my digital camera at home, with 725 votes stored on them. One by one, we removed the memory cards from the machines. I held them in my hand as chief judge Marie was ready to load them into one of the machines that we designated as the accumulator. How fragile. All of the votes from the entire precinct in my hand. Substituting those cards with five identical looking cards, one could replace all of the ballots that were cast with bogus ones. Surely nobody in Maryland would try something like that. The outcome here was certain before the election. However, what about states like Ohio and New Mexico? 725 paper ballots would be much harder to swap than 5 small memory cards. In larger precincts, the cards could hold thousands of ballots, but they would be the same size…

... Counting provisional ballots is painstaking, no more so than when voters cast them at the wrong precinct. Ballots vary from one precinct to another because candidates for U.S. House, General Assembly and judge are elected by districts.

People may cast provisional ballots if their names are not on the list of registered voters at the polling place where they showed up to vote. If they are later found to be eligible to vote, their ballots are counted.

The only way to count those provisional ballots is for elections workers such as Pace and Gilbert to mark a fresh ballot with the votes that should have been cast -- race by race, ballot by ballot.

An estimated 15,000 Wake voters cast provisional ballots, more than any other county in North Carolina. Elections staff worked 14-hour shifts over the weekend and on Monday to count them.

Still, Cherie Poucher, elections director, said they will not be finished in time for this morning's scheduled certification.

That will delay the state's final vote tally, and likely leave some close races -- including commissioner of agriculture, superintendent of public instruction and two Wake District judgeships -- up in the air a little longer. ...

Worth the read if you're interested in the North Carolina election in particular, or if you're interested in the process behind provisional balloting in general. It includes an inset-box with current tallies for races still up in the air.

“Yet I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration,” said Ashcroft, whose health problems earlier this year resulted in removal of his gall bladder.

“I believe that my energies and talents should be directed toward other challenging horizons,” he said.

Both Ashcroft and Evans have served in Bush’s Cabinet from the start of the administration. Evans, a close friend of Bush’s from Texas, wrote, “While the promise of your second term shines bright, I have concluded with deep regret that it is time for me to return home.”

North Carolina - More on the Raleigh GOP Attack07:11 AM EDT | Posted By William Teach
>> Go here to visit William Teach's weblog.

Such special people:

RALEIGH — An apparent supporter of three people arrested in an attack on the N.C. Republican Party headquarters tussled with two cameramen as they followed him from the Wake County Public Safety Center on Monday afternoon.

The young man shielded his face from the cameras as he left the first appearance hearing for David Reuben Hensley, Melissa Lynn Brown and Vanessa Marie Zuloaga, where he had tried to communicate with them from his front row seat. He smashed the cameras to the ground and ran.

Mom always taught me not to follow a mistake up with more mistakes. That is how you get Chernobyl.

Officials charged Asa Lincoln Collier, 18, of Cayce, S.C., with simple assault and two counts of damage to property in connection with the incident, according to a news release from the Raleigh Police Department. Officers were searching for the 5 foot 11 inch tall teen late Monday night.

They know his name and hometown. They have him on film, both still and video (caught some of it on the 10pm news). Turn yourself in, stupid. Will be interesting to find out which college he goes to. Too bad Peace College is for women. But 2 of the defendents are women. And the charges?

Wake County District Court Judge Robert Rader officially informed each defendant of the charge against him or her — felony malicious damaging by use of an incendiary device — and asked each whether he or she wanted a court-appointed attorney, would supply one, or would represent himself of herself.

It is interesting to note that these and other illegal political protests have been proportedly linked to Anarchists. New name for Progressives/Liberals? Check the rest of the article.

…In a letter dated Oct. 21, Ken Nuss, former deputy director of the Auglaize County Board of Elections, claimed that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the company that provides the voting system in Auglaize County, was on the main computer that is used to create the ballot and compile election results, which would go against election protocol. Nuss claimed in the letter that McGinnis was allowed to use the computer the weekend of Oct. 16.

Nuss, who resigned from his job Oct. 21 after being suspended for a day, was responsible for overseeing the computerized programming of election software, according to his job description. His resignation is effective Nov. 11.

The letter also included allegations that Burklo released a sheet from a petition packet filed by Auglaize County Common Pleas Judge Frederick Pepple last December.

North Carolina - Will Mike E Get HIs Lottery?09:12 AM EDT | Posted By William Teach
>> Go here to visit William Teach's weblog.

The question on many news sites minds is will MikeEasley get his Educational Lottery?

There are many for or against a lottery, and many (like me), who can take it or leave it. My concern is that the lottery money would go to education, but not in the way we think it would. It should be earmarked specifically for K-12. Also, using the lottery money could mean that less money is coming out of the General fund towards education, and going towards Easley’s pet projects. See this post of mine regarding what other states have done with their lotteries. It isn’t pretty.

... The State Board of Elections will release the official vote count Tuesday after tallying all provisional ballots, ending the races for commissioner of agriculture, superintendent of public instruction and state auditor.

"I'll be anxious to get the results," said Agriculture Commissioner Britt Cobb of Raleigh, who was trailing his Republican opponent, Steve Troxler, a Guilford County tobacco farmer, by 9,836 votes by Sunday afternoon.

In the race for superintendent of public instruction, Democrat June Atkinson was leading Republican Bill Fletcher by 2,927 votes. Atkinson is a former state school administrator from Raleigh. Fletcher, of Cary, is a member of the Wake County school board.

The race for state auditor remained the least ambiguous.

Republican Les Merritt of Zebulon was leading incumbent Ralph Campbell of Raleigh by more than 35,043 votes Sunday.

The N&O is still running the vote counts for other statewide offices at the top of their NC races page.

Unlike what some of the national papers have reported there were arrests:

Police caught none of the protesters from either demonstration.

But two neighbors did.

Hearing a commotion, John Robbins and a neighbor captured and detained three protesters until police arrived.

"I found them between the garages taking off their black clothes," Robbins said, adding that one of the female protesters bit him on the shoulder.

Vanessa Marie Zuloaga, 24, and Melissa Lynn Brown, 18, both of Columbia, S.C., and David Reuben Hensley, 20, of Raleigh were each charged with one count of causing malicious damage to property by use of an incendiary device, a felony. All three remained in the Wake County jail late Saturday, each being held in lieu of $50,000 bail. (Note: cannot wait to find out what college they attend)

In that county just 7.9% of registered voters are registered as Republicans. However, in 2004 Bush received about 64% of the vote. As the table shows, this is seven times what would be expected if people had voted as they were registered.

However, whatever other questions the table raises, this appears to be part of a pattern.

I downloaded the data for each of the presidental races from 1980 to 2004 and computed the percentage that voted for the Republican presidential candidate in each year, as shown in the table below. So, in Liberty county ("LIB"), 68% voted in 1984 for Reagan and 66% voted in 1988 for Bush I, while 64% voted for Bush II in 2004.

Looking at the table, for most counties support for the Republican presidential candidate peaks in 1984 and 1988.

The final column of the table below computes the "Reagan Difference" as follows:

1. Compute the average of 1984 and 1988.
2. Subtract that average from Bush's 2004 percentage.

Or: RD = 2004_result - average( 1984_result, 1988_result )

As the table shows, support for Bush II has fallen - in many cases by more than 10 points - in most Florida counties from the Reagan-era highpoint of support for the Republican presidential candidate.

A systems software glitch in Craven County’s electronic voting equipment is being blamed for a vote miscount that, when corrected, changed the outcome of at least one race in Tuesday’s election.

Then, in the rush to make right the miscalculation that swelled the number of votes for president here by 11,283 more votes than the total number cast, a human mistake further delayed accurate totals for the 40,534 who voted.

The glitch occurred Tuesday night as absentee ballot totals for one-stop early voting at three Craven County locations and ballots mailed-in were being entered, said Tiffiney Miller, Craven County Board of Elections director.

Looks like ES&S is looking to correct the issue, and the numbers are not official till Tuesday the 9th anyhow.

Three congressmen sent a letter to the General Accounting Office on Friday requesting an investigation into irregularities with voting machines used in Tuesday’s elections…

[…various irregularities described…]

In their letter, representatives John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida asked the GAO to “immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration.”

John Doty, spokesman for Nadler, said the congressmen emphasized that they were not seeking a nationwide recount and were not anticipating that an investigation would change the outcome of the election…

…No one was available at the office of the GAO to respond to questions. But a GAO representative told Wired News in September that the agency was planning to produce a report on e-voting after the election anyway.

Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio’s returns…

James Lee, spokesman with the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office in Columbus, said Thursday he hasn’t heard of any situations similar to Warren County’s building restrictions. He said general security concerns are decided at the local levels.

Other counties, such as Butler County, let people watch ballot checkers through a window.

Typically, the Warren County commissioners’ room is set up as a gathering place for people to watch the votes come in. But that wasn’t done this year…

Warren appears to be a largely rural county with no large towns located between Cincinnati and Dayton. 2000 population: 158,383. In 2002 there were 101,207 registered voters, 50% of whom voted in 2002. In 2004, 91,922 voters went 72% Bush, 27% Kerry.

The day after a two-and-a-half-hour delay in counting ballots due to a glitch in a computer program, LaPorte County election officials are still trying to figure out what happened. “Maybe there was a power surge,” LaPorte County Clerk Lynne Spevak said. “Something zapped it.” At about 7 p.m. Tuesday, it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters… […the patch from Election Systems and Software didn’t work, they might have to manually input the information…]

A systems software glitch in Craven County’s electronic voting equipment is being blamed for a vote miscount that, when corrected, changed the outcome of at least one race in Tuesday’s election. Then, in the rush to make right the miscalculation that swelled the number of votes for president here by 11,283 more votes than the total number cast, a human mistake further delayed accurate totals for the 40,534 who voted… The Elections Systems and Software equipment had downloaded voting information from nine of the county’s 26 precincts and as the absentee ballots were added, the precinct totals were added a second time…

A proposal that would let voters decide whether to allow slot machines at race tracks and jai alai frontons in South Florida won approval after elections officials discovered thousands of absentee votes missed in an electronic tally on Election Day.

The vast majority of the 79,000 absentee ballots added late in Broward County approved the initiative Thursday. That made all the difference in the outcome, swamping the narrow lead that opponents had clung to since Tuesday.

State and local elections officials said the ballot oversight was due to human error in computer programming, not a technical glitch. A leader of No Casinos said opponents would ask Broward County for a re-count anyway, but Secretary of State Glenda Hood said that wasn’t possible under state law…

FORT LAUDERDALE - Early Thursday, as Broward County elections officials wrapped up after a long day of canvassing votes, something unusual caught their eye. Tallies should go up as more votes are counted. That’s simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone . . . down.

Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward…

Note: That sounds like it might be a “short vs. long” issue. Without going into too much detail, a “short” can only represent a much more limited range of numbers than a “long.” A “signed” short or long uses the same bits to represent both positive and negative numbers. This post from over 12 years ago describes the difference and suggest using longs except when memory is critical or otherwise dictated. While there are certainly situations in which using a short would be advisable, this wouldn’t appear to be one of them. If the wraparound is indeed because a short was used where a long would be advised, this is clearly a major error resulting from very poor design, very poor coding, a major uncaught bug, or something else.

If this is a database column, it’s clearly a very major design error.

Otherwise, it could be a casting /conversion problem or an arithmetic error or a transmission problem or something else. One would think this bug would have been caught the first time they tested to see if the machine could handle a large number of votes, if they did indeed test that.

President Bush’s point man for international counterterrorism policy has quit, the first resignation by a senior official to be made public since Bush’s reelection, a U.S. official said on Friday.

Cofer Black, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism for the last two years, told his bosses of his decision well before the election, which Bush won campaigning as a strong leader in the war on terror.

“He informed the State Department a few weeks ago that the transition period after the election would be the right time for him to explore new professional opportunities,” State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told Reuters.

He plans to leave the government in a few weeks, added Ereli, who did not know what Black would move on to.

Our daughter spent the last week before the election helping campaign in New Hampshire. She brought back the best campaign sign ever. Hopefully she will send us one back here in Illinois. You can see it by visiting here. Thanks for the opportunity to have been a part of your election 2004 citizen team.

Following is a transcript of President Bush’s news conference yesterday, as recorded by The New York Times:
Opening Statement

Yesterday I pledged to reach out to the whole nation. And today I’m proving that I’m willing to reach out to everybody by including the White House press corps.

This week the voters of America set the direction of our nation for the next four years. I’m honored by the support of my fellow citizens. And I’m ready for the job.

We are fighting a continuing war on terror and every American has a stake in the outcome of this war. Republicans, Democrats and independents all love our country and together we’ll protect the American people. We will preserve - we’ll persevere until the enemy is defeated. We’ll stay strong and resolute. We have a duty - a solemn duty - to protect the American people, and we will.

Every civilized country also has a stake in the outcome of this war. Whatever our past disagreements, we share a common enemy. We have common duties to protect our peoples, to confront disease and hunger and poverty in troubled regions of the world.

I’ll continue to reach out to our friends and allies, our partners in the E.U. and NATO, to promote development and progress, to defeat the terrorists and to encourage freedom and democracy as alternatives to tyranny and terror.

I also look forward to working with the present Congress and the new Congress that will arrive in January. I congratulate the men and women who’ve just been elected to the House and the Senate. I will join with old friends and new friends to make progress for all Americans.

Congress will return later this month to finish this current session. I urge members to pass the appropriations bill that remain, showing spending discipline while focusing on our nation’s priorities.

Republicans won 9 (possibly 10, pending a recount) out of the 23 open Oklahoma House seats previously held by Democrats, plus they replaced incumbent Democrat Roy McClain with Dan Sullivan in House 71 (a 13 point margin). Republicans lost one incumbent — Stuart Ericson (HD 13) was swamped by a Brad Carson turnout push in the Carson’s 2nd Congressional District and lost to Jerry McPeek by 347 votes (3%). A net pickup of 8 gives Republicans 57 seats to 44 for the Democrats. If David Schaffer (HD 78) prevails in a recount, the score would go to 58-43, just nine votes short of a two-thirds majority.

SoonerPoll.com made their State House picks last week and even polled 17 key races — 13 open Democrat seats, two incumbent Democrat seats, and two open Republican seats. Let’s compare their picks to the results in open Democrat seats (SoonerPoll rating in parentheses after the seat number, and poll result where available, MOE +/- 4.4%).

SoonerPoll.com came very near the result (within MOE) in Districts 10, 12, 55, 59, 64, 78, and 92. They didn’t poll a couple of races that turned out to be upsets — Districts 5 and 42, which were rated likely D but went Republican, and District 13, a likely R seat held by an incumbent that went D. In some cases, they got the winner right but were way off on the margin — like HD 30, and HD 33, supposedly a 1.5% leaner, which ended up a 28 point landslide.

Other “leaning D” seats went heavily for the Republican: In HD 27, they polled it as leaning D by 2.7 but it was won by the Republican by 12 points. The two open Republican seats they had as leaners, but the Republicans won by double-digits.

I give a lot of credit to SoonerPoll.com for making the effort to poll these races and making the result public. There are some improvements to be made, either in their likely voter screen or their random selection method. The Republican GOTV effort probably accounts for the bigger-than-expected margins.

Not all politics is at the national level. Colorado Democrats figured that out this year and made a large impact in a “red state”. An impact that might be felt in future federal elections.

What did they do? In a year dominated by the presidential election they poured their money into state-level elections. As a result they took over the Colorado state house and state senate. This was done with financing of four liberal donors to the cause - Pat Stryker, Jared Polis, Tim Gill, and Rutt Bridges. Together they contributed to the bulk of a $2 million fund that outspent their Republican counterparts 3-to-1.

Want a walk down memory lane? Click any of the categories over in the left-hand column under “Search The Post,” like “Clark” or “Moseley-Braun” or “Boston” …

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(cough cough)

Ummm. Yes.

So … now what?

Keep this page? Make it about politics in general? Sort of a National Journal for the People?

Kill it? Relegate it to the archives (ours and that of the Library of Congress)?

Leave it here, like the Monolith in 2001 … a sentinel of something that came before, that we still don’t fully understand, but if we examine, we gain new knowledge?

Or should we just drink a beer, look back at all the news, all the history, and in particular, all the posts from our 86 citizen journalist “Command Post Pajamhadeen” over the past three days, and say, “boy, that was fun?”